


A Sunrise Out of Conway

by misura



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Fluff, M/M, Mansion Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-25
Updated: 2010-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 12:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>By the fourth week, Kris had grown sort of used to Adam being technically dead about half the time.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sunrise Out of Conway

They told Kris he would be rooming with the vampire like it was no big deal - except that there were cameras in the room when they did it. Plus, there was the whole part where they actually _told_ him instead of just putting the room assignments on a paper and handing it out to everyone.

"Yeah, okay," Kris said, kind of feeling like something a little bit more was expected of him, but clueless what, precisely, that would be. Was he supposed to get angry? Annoyed? Horrified?

"Adam - isn't that the ... " one of the other guys started, looking at Kris like he thought Kris was a dumb blonde or something, which would have been kind of insulting if the guy'd actually ever _talked_ to Kris. Since he hadn't - as far as Kris knew, none of the participants had met before today - Kris shrugged it off as a mistaken first impression. He'd deal with it later.

In addition to the vampire - _Adam_ , Kris reminded himself, _call him 'Adam'_ \- there were five women and six other guys. It was tempting to look around, size up the competition, so to speak, but firstly, Kris didn't really think you could tell how good singer someone was just by looking at them and secondly, he had two bags of stuff that wouldn't carry _themselves_ up the stairs.

Also: the way some people were looking at him when that guy had drawn their attention to Kris's roommate made him a bit uncomfortable. Like they were feeling _sorry_ for him.

"If it was me, I'd demand another room," someone said - not even softly, the way you were supposed to when talking about someone behind their back.

Kris didn't turn, but he did stop walking long enough to toss out a: "Then I guess it's lucky I'm not you." The rules had been pretty clear - no room switching, unless the situation was extremely serious. Snoring, they'd been told, did not count.

Happily, Kris had gotten the one roommate where snoring definitely wasn't going to be a problem.

 

The media had gone pretty crazy over the whole thing - crazier than warranted, Kris felt, although to judge by the conversation he'd just turned his back on, that might just be him. Vampires had been officially 'outed' for close to ten years, but none of them had ever participated in _American Idol_.

For all of the best-sellers people'd written about them - from Anne Rice's 'sort of bad guy turned rockstar' Lestat to Laurell K. Hamilton's whatshisname - most people in America didn't really seem to think a vampire should be allowed to take part in something like _Idol_. Unfortunately for them, the requirements for participation did not include 'being alive' and so, after a lot of arguing and protesting and people making a big deal, it had been decided that this season would include _one_ participant with 'unusual nutritional requirements'.

Before the start of the next season, they'd probably change the requirements. Kris couldn't say he disapproved; it wasn't that he had anything against vampires, but they'd been told that in order to stand even a _chance_ of winning, they'd have to work their asses off - which was fine; Kris'd known this wasn't going to be a vacation or anything. He was human; he could make do with three hours of sleep if he needed to.

Unless the information package they'd handed out at the meeting had it all wrong though, staying up late wasn't really an option when you were a vampire. When the sun went down, you became 'alive' - when the sun came up again, you dropped dead. Simple as that.

Kris didn't know why this Adam guy had ever bothered; he could be the next Paul McCartney and it wouldn't matter a thing - if you didn't have enough time to practice, you weren't going to make a good showing.

Of course, if you _did_ have enough time to practice, that wasn't much of a guarantee either.

 

Kris's first impression of the va- of _Adam_ was that he was tall. He was also awake, which was nice, given that Kris hadn't really been looking forwards to walking into his room and finding, well, a corpse. Like, was he supposed to say 'hi', when Adam was clearly dead?

Adam's luggage seemed pretty normal - four bags, which was twice as many as Kris had brought, and no coffin that Kris could see.

"Hey." It felt great to be able to dump his bags on the floor and sit down for a while without needing to worry about missing something important. "Kris Allen."

"Adam Lambert. Although you probably already knew that." Adam smiled a bit ruefully.

Kris chuckled. "Yeah, sorry - I do read a newspaper every now and then."

"Don't believe anything you've read about me," Adam said, "except for the parts you liked, of course."

"Of course." Kris tried to think of something he'd read about Adam that didn't have anything to do with his being a vampire. "So, you like Queen, huh?"

Adam laughed. It was a nice laugh, Kris thought - it sounded very human, nothing evil or sinister about it, the way you could always tell who the bad guys were in a movie, all 'muahaha'. "Don't tell me you're a fan, too?"

"I wouldn't say I'm a fan, exactly," Kris said. "But, sure, they're okay."

" _Okay_?" Adam echoed, looking half-amused and half-offended. "Sweetie, have you ever _listened_ to them?"

All things considered, it wasn't the worst first meeting Kris had ever had, really.

 

In the first week, they got to pick a song by Michael Jackson - Kris picked _'Remember the Time'_ ("The video for that was wicked awesome," Adam said, "but please tell me you're not going to wear something gold, because that's _so_ not your color," to which Kris said: "Yeah?" because the thought of dressing up as Michael Jackson had never even crossed his mind, really).

Adam chose _'Black or White'_.

"It's not a statement, okay?"

"Sure," Kris said, although he thought it totally _was_ a statement.

Adam frowned at him. "It's _not_."

"I wasn't disagreeing with you."

"Yes, you were."

Kris considered pointing out it wasn't nice to read someone's mind, especially not when they were trying to not get into an argument with you.

Adam rolled his eyes. "Oh, grow up, Kristopher. Like I need to read your mind when your face is telling me everything you're not saying out loud."

"Um." Kris felt his face grow warm, but then Adam laughed, softly, and somehow that made everything okay again. Even if Kris still didn't agree about the song not being a statement.

 

Although some of the contestants who'd actually _met_ Adam still looked at him as if they thought he shouldn't be here, Kris was happy to find Katy a lot less close-minded.

She did ask, of course - what with the way some of the media had blown things out of proportion, Kris supposed he should be relieved she hadn't shown up in person, with a stake in one hand and a hammer in the other.

"I like him," he said, trying to keep the defensiveness out of his voice. "He's pretty cool."

"Shouldn't there be an 'and' in that sentence?" Katy chuckled. "I've seen him, you know."

"Yeah." Kris felt himself relax and realized he'd actually been tense up until that moment. It made him feel sort of guilty - he'd never been tense about talking to Katy before.

Katy chuckled again, as if she'd heard his thoughts just now and wanted to let him know it was all right. "So, is this a 'like' kind of liking, or ... ?"

"I like him," Kris repeated firmly.

"You're really cute when you have a crush," Katy said.

 

By the fourth week, Kris had grown sort of used to Adam being technically dead about half the time. Other people in the Idol mansion seemed to have warmed up to Adam, too, with a few not-notable exceptions. It wasn't as if the mansion was too small to avoid people, anyway; Kris couldn't say he actually _disliked_ any of the other contestants, but yeah, after three hours of practice without getting somewhere he wanted to get, there were certain someones he prefered not to talk to.

"You look like you need some coffee," Adam said, sipping from a large-ish paper cup with the Starbucks logo printed on it.

"Is that an offer to share?"

Adam snorted softly. "Definitely not. Go get your own ... coffee."

"Ooh, ominous pauses. Classic," Kris said, for all that it was true it hadn't occured to him until five seconds ago that the liquid Adam was sipping almost certainly wasn't coffee.

"Every now and then, I do try to live up to the stereotype."

"No accent?" Kris grinned.

Adam scowled.

"Hey, it's cool, man," Kris said, beginning to enjoy himself. "I get it. You suck at accents. Nothing to be ashamed of - there's plenty of things I'm not good at either."

"Like dancing? I saw the video."

Kris tried really hard to be happy about that - Adam having seen the video meant that someone had shown it to him, which meant people really _were_ getting closer to Adam, instead of just seeing him as 'the vampire'. "As I said, plenty of things I'm not good at."

 

Adam sang _'Play That Funky Music'_ that week, and Kris thought it was probably just his imagination Adam seemed to look at him several times during the song, catching him as he moved along with the music just a little bit - it was a catchy song, and a classic.

Kris himself had opted for something a little bit slower - _'Ain't No Sunshine'_ \- and it was only when he actually performed it that he figured Adam might take it to mean something it didn't.

"Just because I'm dead that doesn't mean I don't know what it's like to be in love, you know," Adam said, when Kris sort of awkwardly brought it up.

"Yeah, I know." Kris didn't really think of Adam as 'dead'. You didn't talk to people when they were 'dead' - not people who talked back and smiled at you and made you feel better when you were having a lousy day, anyway. "It's just ... the whole sunshine thing?"

"Well, I miss that, obviously," Adam said matter-of-factly. "Happily, I've got _you_ now."

Whatever that was supposed to mean. "Um, thanks?"

 

"You're younger than I am," Kris said, staring at the list of songs Adam was to select next week's song from. "How can you be younger than I am?"

"The usual way?" Adam flopped down on his bed. "Thanks for making me feel like I look old, by the way. Nice to know you're trying not to hurt my feelings."

Kris rolled his eyes. "I thought vampires were all supposed to be centuries old or something."

"Got your hopes up for hearing me sing a little opera? I can do that, you know - just for you."

"No thanks, I heard you in the shower yesterday." The acoustics in the bathroom sucked, of course, what with it being the _bathroom_. Still, Adam hadn't actually sounded _bad_. Not that Kris was going to mention that.

"Your loss," Adam said cheerfully. "So, what was hot in 1984?"

 

Kris didn't know quite how he'd missed the fact that there were fewer and fewer contestants remaining in the mansion - he hadn't really come here expecting - well, anything. He'd simply figured he'd do his best and see what happened; pointless to worry about things you couldn't do a thing about.

If he was honest with himself, he might admit that he'd worried about Adam. Not the whole vampire thing; _that_ , Kris had pretty much stopped worrying about from day one. The part where Adam might be voted off though, just because there were too many people out there who were biased against vampires - it wouldn't even have anything to do with Adam's singing. It would be _wrong_.

On the other hand, with seven contestants remaining, Kris figured maybe it was time to stop worrying about that, too. People were voting for Adam - and if some of them were doing it merely because Adam was hot (as some of the media were saying), then so what? It wasn't as if Adam wasn't.

"Thinking about me?"

Kris turned. "In your dreams."

"Trust me: in my dreams, you're getting to do a lot more than _think_." Adam leered exaggeratedly.

"In reality, on the other hand, it's all 'look but don't touch'." Kris didn't even know if Adam was interested in guys in general that way, let alone in him, specifically. Given that they were roommates, it didn't seem like a good idea to push the subject - Adam seemed happy enough to flirt, and Kris figured it wasn't as if there was any kind of deadline.

Except for the part where either of them could be sent home once a week, that was.

 

"It's not that I don't appreciate the sentiment," Katy said, "but, you know, maybe you should be paying a little less attention to _my_ lovelife and a bit more to your own? Yes, I 'work hard for the money' but trust me, if anyone fails to 'treat me right', I can take care of that all by myself."

Kris frowned, even though he knew Katy wouldn't be able to see it. "I know that." She was right though; he _had_ picked the song because it reminded him of Katy.

"At least Adam got the right idea."

"You know, I considered picking that song and staring deeply into his eyes while I sung it, but then I remembered contestants don't actually get to vote so ... "

"Is that cynicism I hear?" Katy mock-gasped. "So it's happened at last. Kris Allen is no longer the nice, innocent guy from Conway, Arkansas. Wait till the media catch wind of this."

Adam hadn't looked at anyone in particular while he'd sung that if he couldn't have that one special person, he didn't want anybody else - not as far as Kris could tell, anyway, and he was pretty sure he'd been paying close enough attention to have noticed it if Adam'd been singing to anyone in particular.

"Look, I just picked a song I thought would be fun to sing and he did the same."

"You don't want to tell him you love him while half of America is watching," Katy said. "I get it, Kris."

"It's just a crush," Kris said - which was when someone coughed from the doorway, because there was of course no way Adam could have walked in on Kris talking about Katy's next movie or how he missed his mother's cooking. "Um. I think I have to go to a rehearsal."

"He walked in and heard you say that, didn't he?"

Kris looked at Adam. Adam grinned and arched an eyebrow. "I'll talk to you later."

"Remember: I want details," Katy said.

 

And then there were only four of them left, and it occured to Kris that in the very best case scenario, he had only three more weeks left to decide what to do about Adam, because even if they'd promised they'd stay in touch after, Kris knew that it would never again be the way it was now, with Adam being there every night and early morning.

When they announced there were going to be duets, Kris sort of hoped he and Adam would get to sing one together - they already shared a room, so why not let them share a song, too?

"You're cute when you're jealous. Well, cuter than usual, that is."

Kris didn't think that was a good reason, exactly. "I'm not jealous," he said.

"Right." Adam sighed. "Look, who else were they going to get to sing with Danny? With me, half the time he'd want to dunk me in holy water - which wouldn't do a thing except ruin my hair and make-up, by the way - "

"A fate worse than death."

" - and the other half, he'd be terrified of me biting him," Adam went on, ignoring Kris's interruption. "Which is really insulting my taste, but there you go."

"What _is_ your taste, anyway?" Kris asked, because the opening seemed too good to pass up on, even if Adam probably wouldn't give him a serious answer.

"Cute and jealous and on the short side?"

Kris grimaced. "No, really."

"Yes, really," Adam said, but he was grinning. "Know anyone like that?"

 

Danny went home later that week and Kris told himself it was stupid to feel the tiniest shred of guilt over that. Their duet had been fine - not great, exactly, but Kris hadn't been holding back or anything merely because it was Danny standing with him on the stage instead of Adam.

"You're probably going to win this, you know."

"Um, way to jinx me there," Kris said. "Thanks a lot."

Adam gave him a look. "I mean it. Let's face it, it's not as if it was ever going to be me, and while I love Alli to bits, she's still only seventeen. She simply hasn't got the experience."

"We're talking about singing here, aren't we?"

Adam rolled his eyes. "Yes, Kris, we're talking about singing here."

"And your point would be that everyone who's been voting for you these past weeks is going to stop voting for you next week because they're suddenly going to remember you're a vampire?"

Kris didn't think he'd have liked to lose to Danny. That would have hurt his pride, a little, even if he knew this was at least partially a popularity contest. Losing to Allison - well, like Adam had said, Allison was the kind of person it was easy to love to bits.

Losing to Adam would be all right, too, Kris figured.

"When I first came here, all I wanted to do was win," Adam said. "To show people I could."

"I guess that's what most people were thinking when they got here."

"You weren't."

"I wasn't," Kris admitted. "But hey, I'm special."

Adam didn't smile when he replied: "Yes, you are."

 

Kris had read somewhere that sometimes, when people were dead, it just looked like they were asleep. Looking at Adam, he found it hard to imagine anyone could make that sort of mistake, unless it involved a whole lot of squinting and wishful thinking - and even then, Kris couldn't quite fool himself.

Adam was dead.

Kris thought the idea should freak him out a lot more than it did. Maybe it was simply that he'd already maxed out his freaked-outness by being in the finals of Idol.

"Kris," Adam said, alive again just like that.

 _Now_ , of course, Kris felt like he might be about to, if not _freak_ out, then at least _chicken_ out. "Hey."

"Missed me?" Adam's mouth smiled but his eyes were a little bit worried.

Kris wondered if maybe a letter wouldn't be a better way to do this after all. "Don't I always?"

"You're usually not admitting it."

"I think I might be in love with you," Kris said. "I know this is really bad timing, but I just wanted to get it off my chest before - well, before. So there."

Adam breathed in and out again (and that was it, Kris thought; dead people didn't breathe and people who were asleep _did_ , so how could anyone ever think - ). "You _think_ you _might_ be in love with me? You _think_?"

Kris actually flinched a bit at Adam's tone. "I have a head," he said. "I assume there are brains inside."

"You _suck_ at love confessions." Adam groaned as he got up. "Seriously."

"Hey," Kris said, figuring that if Adam was criticizing his performance, that had to mean he was more or less all right with the contents. "You think you can do better, be my guest."

Adam scoffed. "Fine. I was going to climb through your bedroom window and watch you while you were sleeping, but if this is how you want it, all right. I love you. Let's get married."

" _Married_?" Kris didn't think Adam was joking.

"Oh, you're one of _those_ guys," Adam said. "You want all the sex but none of the commitment?"

"Um." Kris didn't really want sex. Well, yes, he did want sex, obviously, only -

"We can start with something smaller," Adam proposed. "You could be my opening act when I win and go on a world tour."

"You could be mine?" Kris said, because okay, so he did think Adam was great, only that didn't mean he was allowed to just assume he was going to beat Kris.

"Absolutely." Adam beamed and hugged him. "It will be awesome!"


End file.
